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Apple may change iPhone SDK to avoid antitrust case

updated 11:45 pm EDT, Mon May 3, 2010

by MacNN Staff

Apple could dodge FTC complaints with SDK change

Apple could avoid a possible FTC antitrust investigation by changing the terms of the iPhone 4.0 SDK, insiders said Monday night. The FTC would supposedly leave Apple alone if it let developers write iPhone apps using other tools, such as Adobe's Flash CS5 or MonoTouch. How likely this would be wasn't described.

Due to the way the WSJ anonymizes sources, it wasn't clear whether the contact was from Apple, hinting at possible reciprocation, the FTC, or another organization altogether. Apple CEO Steve Jobs' criticism of third-party tools makes it unlikely that his company has changed opinions in a short space of time.

The new update as well as companionstories have also reinforced the one-time rumor and now have both the FTC and the Department of Justice potentially launching investigations. Procedures are reportedly at such an early stage that neither agency is certain which should lead or when one of them can commit to any investigation.

Government pressure may be opposed by Apple, which believes that third-party development tools have often held back advancement of the Mac and could do the same for the iPhone. However, developers have criticized Apple for not only restricting the software they can use to write apps but for artificially inflating the cost of supporting more than one platform. Mobile advertiser Greystripe's CEO Michael Chang has explained that writing an app using Flash CS5 for the iPhone could cost $75,000 initially but would cost just a few thousand dollars more to port to Android. Without Adobe's tool, however, developers could be forced to rewrite from scratch and spend as much as they did before. The sheer expense could be considered anti-competitive as it would make writing for more than one platform cost-prohibitive for smaller studios.

Adobe has tried to sidestep technical questions and has accused Apple of political maneuvering to attack Flash. It has said it plans to stop supporting the iPhone in cross-platform development after Flash CS5 and may be giving employees Nexus Ones to promote a personal switch to the more Flash-friendly Android platform.

Apple does not qualify as a monopoly so the decision to not support (proprietary) Flash which is a dying technology that mostly led to sucky resource-hog features on mobile media is simply no big deal. The world will do just fine with HTML5.

market share so it hardly qualifies as a monopoly. I wonder who started this antitrust rumor? Since so many haters insist that Apple's mobile platform is going to fail because of the walled garden approach, why are they so concerned what Apple does. Apple isn't destroying Adobe since Flash is supported on Mac desktop computers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having an alternative technology to view content. I would think Adobe and Flash would be under scrutiny if Flash use is as widespread as they say it is. Flash technology sounds like a monopoly to me.

"...unfairly skews competition by forcing companies to develop either for Apple or for everyone else."

That would be hilarious - the company that has always been an after thought being accused of forcing companies to develop for it... ha ha ha! That would be truly funny if anything came of this - because it would be far too easy to follow the money after the absurdity. The notion that it is wrong for a company to ask developers to develop for... your platform! Ha ha ha! As if Apple is rightfully always to accept Window hand me downs.

On the one hand, I'd love to see Apple get it in their heads that a death-grip on the iPhone 'experience' is hardly necessary to ensure its success. If this results in them taking a less adversarial stance toward the iPhone OS development community, that would be a positive change.

On the other hand, Apple is not a monopoly player in the smartphone market. Not even close. While not exactly comparable in quality, Android and Pre present viable alternatives. Plus, carrier contracts aside, there isn't the sort of lock-in with the iPhone that (for example) Windows has enjoyed on the desktop. People can (and do) switch from one phone to the other fairly easily.

Simply put, the government should keep its nose out of this matter. Let Apple's hubris be tamed by market forces, not regulatory action.

We're all suckers for landing on articles like this and commenting on how absurd the rumor is. While blog sites happily re-report this ridiculous you-know-what, their page hit counts ca-ching them all the way to the bank.

Rumor, innuendo, and unsubstantiated 'facts' that sound completely uncharacteristic of Apple given its recent statements. Something like that requires more journalism before you go to publish. "WSJ said it" is no excuse given that the once reliable news operation is now a Murdoch rag.

How is it Apple's problem what it costs a developer to write apps for a competing platform? I don't see any government investigation into Microsoft for "forcing" Mac, Linux and Unix developers to rewrite their apps for competing platforms.

The issue isn't just that Apple is trying to limit the programs that a developer can use, the bigger issue is that companies spent money developing programs (or add-ons) to allow developers to create iphone applications, which were previously allowed. Now apple is essentially killing them off. You can't do that.

These rumors start when some joker associated with a news oriented website posts what he/she hopes would occur and then a number of other websites pick it up and start playing it up as if it was a true occurrence, just as how the rumors about Apple acquiring ARM started and spread before it got shot down by ARM's CEO.

Although I think Apple is too principled in their "Xcode or nothing" approach, this is not the right way to convince them to open up to other platforms. It should be a market-based decision by Apple for Apple. Government dictating cross-platform development? No way. Apple should win this battle.

Another "insider" source. Sheesh. I miss the days when news sources were required to have journalists on staff who actually reported news instead of just making up bullshit and calling it a "rumor" or information from "an unnamed source". Yeah. Right. Sure.

I mean come on - Apple - a monopoly? How? By what measure? I guess having the highest quality product and highest rated customer service and satisfaction must now qualify you as a monopoly, huh?

I mean, I love the internet and electronic media - but man, did it ever open the portal wide open for any moron who can slightly type and hit submit.

"Mobile advertiser Greystripe's CEO Michael Chang has explained that writing an app using Flash CS5 for the iPhone could cost $75,000 initially but would cost just a few thousand dollars more to port to Android. Without Adobe's tool, however, developers could be forced to rewrite from scratch and spend as much as they did before"

That's not the whole story. Any competent developer will tell you most of the time is spent planning the architecture and interface of the app. The implementation comes later and accounts for less time. The total cost of developing an app is far more than the time spent writing code, and the non-code writing part is applicable across all platforms.

Apple probably will change the language of the SDK license so that it does not outright ban Flash CS5-created apps. But I'm guessing that they will include a clause that apps can be rejected from the App Store due to high CPU usage, or other factors that may drain battery life or otherwise affect the device's overall performance.

Whether the Apple haters or Adobe fans want to believe it or not, this is first and foremost a technology issue. (Yes, Apple wants you to buy a Mac and use the iPhone SDK, but that's just an added benefit.) As Steve said in his letter, Apple has been waiting for a mobile version of Flash that a.) actually works and b.) doesn't destroy the performance of the phone. They haven't been able to deliver it.

Folks that have jailbroken their iPhones to install Adobe's sample Flash-created iPhone apps report that they are indeed massive CPU hogs and bog down the core functions of the phone. Apple may not want Flash on the iPhone for many reasons that are selfish and benefit them, but they are sitting pretty as long as they are waiting on Adobe to prove a mobile Flash will even work in the first place!

It's going to have interesting implications for Android native development, because the option to write Flash for Android is going to lead a lot of companies to do that rather than native.

Which means all the issues Jobs identified (writing to the subset supported by Adobe, not to the latest OS version) - and it also means making it easier for WinMob7 to compete, by giving them ready access to the same Flash content.

You'd have thought it would be in Google's interest to make this a 3-horse race (iPhone, Android, Nokia/Symbian) by pushing developers towards native over Flash. Of course, practically speaking, that may happen anyway (the fact Google and Palm have created low-level SDKs for games that bypass the Android/WebOS layers says a lot about the real practicalities of mobile development).

This upsets me so much, the FTC is seriously going to complain about a stupid SDK when Apple + AT&T have had a clearly illegal monopoly going with the iPhone since 2007? Are you kidding? They have done everything in their power to try and keep customers from being able to use their non-subsidized iPhones on competitor GSM networks, which are clearly monopolistic and unfair business practices, and the FTC is going to complain about an SDK which barely, if at all, would come even close to being considered monopolistic? The FTC needs to do something about AT&T's 2007 monopoly, like they did about their 80s monopoly, THAT'S FAR MORE IMPORTANT THEN THE SDK.

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